Tough as a feather... Need help!

[thefinaltuba]

So I was playing a game tonight against my friend, he was playing Warriors of Chaos, and I was playing a somewhat friendly 2 core, full special/rare, archmage led list. He had a wizard with the level 6 nurgle spell (d6 S6 to all enemies within 18") I wasn't too worried, I have 5 DD and 2 scrolls, but the first turn he casts it with irresistible force, doing a lot of damage. He killed a lion chariot, several white lions, half a unit of archers, some spearmen, and put two wounds on an RBT, plus a bit more I think. It hurt, but I was gonna move on. I took my first turn, then when it cane back to his turn, he got an irresistible force again on that spell. He killed 6 swordmasters, finished the RBT, killed the other lion chariot, just to name a few.

Now obviously this scenario can be heavily attributed to very lucky dice rolling, but it brought up a very important question. I'm used to playing daemons, all with their 5+ ward save, and have played High Elves very little so far. With an army of almost all T3, low armor, and little ward saves, how do you deal with your opponent? Obviously in combat this is less of an issue; ASF with my stronger units often balances the issue. But for ranged attacks and spells, I'm concerned about the fact that I have little to do to counter the incoming wounds. In the above scenario, my opponent just had to roll 2's and that thing would die. So in short, what are some tactics/strategies for dealing with this kind of incoming damage? Thanks for the help!

[GobbladasSquig]

Area damage spells such as the nurgle spell you got the worst of, Crown of Taidron, Drain Life etc. are always devastating to elf armies. I remember almost completely annihilating one wood elf army with Crown of Taidron once (I was playing high elves, though, so took some friendly fire too ). Things that you can do are

1) Dispel - doesn't work when someone is getting IF all the time, but all anti-magic that you can muster usually helps; scrolls, Drain magic (area damage spells usually have high casting values), vortex shard etc.

2) Spread your troops - usually these spells have somewhat limited range, which means you can always protect at least a part of your army by not clumping together; deploy RBTs and archers very close to your table edge so that those spells can't be used against them in the first few turns

3) Take troops that can handle the damage - taking phoenix guard or big units with either Banner of World Dragon or Loremaster's Cloak who are very resistant / practically immune to spell damage

That's about it. Also never field soft characters outside units and try to steer away from MSU (multiple small units / minimum size units) against armies that have a lot of area spells. Big units such as 20ish swordmasters with Standard of Balance can take a lot of damage and still be very dangerous (although not durable per se), where as three units of 7 swordmasters are just asking to get fried by area damage.

[White_Phoenix]

First of all, this is an extreme case of bad luck - usually you wont face those kinds of lucky opponenets.

But the T3 is the statistic that balances us. We really gotta play by it. In order to prevent this kind of things from happening, you need to space out things abit, and try to give as little LoS of your units to enemy mages.

Now - we do have Loremaster's cloak, and Banner of tWD. Use them - both are very effective.

Other then that, i recommend trying to cast Drain Magic at least once or twice every round against heavy magic armies.

[Minsc]

(d6 S6 to all enemies within 18")

Rot Glorious Rot deals D6 Strenght D6 ignores AS. not D6 S6 - that's quite a huge difference, especially if he played it that way and got IF 2 times in a row.

[Silver]

Yes, as the spell even specifies:

'Roll separately for each unit' Thus each unit gets hit by a different Strength value, which could be S6 for all if he has godly luck.

[thefinaltuba]

Haha well he was having godly luck. But anyways, he's really new to the army so I don't hold it against him. We're definitely having a rematch though.

Same question still stands, and thanks for the responses, I'll keep those things in mind, and try to include some of those sweet magic items.

[grantmepower]

I disagree so much with the people who are saying you should space out. High elves work in such a way that we can't afford to space out otherwise we get swarmed to death. Against armies with many more deployments than us we pretty much have to use a refused flank tactic. Even against elite armies spacing out isn't good, as winning usually requires units supporting each other rather than each going it on its own.
To deal with the area effect spells, well yeah, high elves will always have problems with that and there is little we can do about it other than of course dispelling it. High elves are not daemons! Remember that and you should be ok.
~Grant

[Lord Anathir]

yeah, you should stay tight like grant said.

[GobbladasSquig]

I can't quite see why high elves should stay tighter than other armies. Of all my armies (wood elves, orcs 'n' gobbos and warriors of chaos) I find it easiest to form two separate functional flanks with high elves. With easy access to cheap, ultra-mobile disposable units and a great variety of different units for different roles, it's quite easy to form tag-teams to take out batches of enemy units. Add flexible and/or mobile shooting and magic and voila.

Maybe it's just me, but I find we some excellent units that can easily hold their own. I mean, how do you swarm some 20ish swordmasters with Standard of Balance? You can't even flank them with half the units in the game! Or 14 white lions with Lion Standard and Gem of Courage? They're gonna hold a flank forever against swarm armies.

Try playing orcs and you'll see what terms such as "leadership bubble" and "character support" really mean.

[Musashi]

Elves function best in the classic blitzkrieg doctrine - concentration at the point of contact. You can keep your units apart so long as they are near enough to be mutually supporting.